The songs i sing when the world yells disaster
latifa sekarini
After John Ashbery
Sound just like the stubborn moon in Scorpio, the Monday morning
Horoscope that proclaims “You will miss your bus.” Wake up to
A medicine cabinet that ran away from the antacids. Or household ruckus.
Friends bickering over gibbous truths. Honeycombed minutes
Escort you toward unbearable canyons. For the longest time, you hoped
The times were kind to you. You forget how tenacity blooms in
Cities. How inquisitive hands in the plaza hands you wholeness.
How betrayal comes in bejeweled honesty, how I am both
The crimson in your cheeks and the salmon in your nail beds,
The skeletons in your closet and the noon-lit bathroom sink
Where mortification meets a mirror. Exhaustion offers itself
To you in the most loving manner. And what do you wish for?
You wish for it to hit you harder, to never fissure into kindness.
Is it “blasphemous” if this is all our lighthouse lives are meant to play?
Make a hobby out of believing. But endearing relief costs more than
the modified pain of a treacherous bone. And the city
Shatters before its music plays on. Is this an ending that
The world can dance to? One cannot wait
For their ribs to learn how to upstage the quiet out of them.
For the skeletons in our closet are craving
Again, and again, those unbearable canyons.